First ride of the season!

I'm just back in Chamonix after 3 days riding in Tignes, my first slide of the winter.

I'm over there with a couple of private clients, (one on skis Rhiannon, partner of a regular Snowboard client of mine, Lee) who are training up for a Lyngen Alps trip later in the winter.

We have spent the first 3 days working on technique, which has gone really well. I've worked on building their understanding of how skis and snowboards actually work, building their understanding of what they actually need to do physically to bend the ski or Snowboard in the right place at the right time to make it follow a line that works with the terrain that they ride.

Line and how you look and read the mountains terrain is the key here, you can't change technique if you don't follow a line that works with the terrain. You can't for example work the end of the turn, which is the most important part of the turn in terms of speed control into the next turn, to create a flowing working line, if you focus on looking down the slope at the end of your turn.

You line will basically follow where you look, most riders look at to steep a line down the slope which means they carry too much speed and have to skid and rotate.

Anyway, without getting into it to much, you cant change technique without changing someones concept of where they look and how they ride the mountain. likewise, with out an understanding of how your equipment actually works, in terms of sidecut and flex, you can't really understand the movements needed to actually work your Snowboard or skis.

Simply put...Understanding your equipment means that you know where to apply pressure to it in order to flex it appropriately to the line you want to ride.

Understanding the line that works with the terrain and the speed you want to carry is fundamental, and seems obvious, but you'd be surprised at how many people suffer in their technique and riding simply because of where they look and how they read the terrain.

Once you understand these first 2 elements you then need to learn the simple and natural body movements that are used in order to apply pressure to the board/ski in the right place in order to flex it into the line you want to ride.

When you get it right you riding will flow with the terrain and you can play around with variations of the working line putting your own inspiration to the mountains canvas!

Get it?

Ok, anyway, Tignes has been fun, the Glacier is in quite good condition and the home run is ok but purely man made snow. It hasn't really snowed yet this winter (2 days a few of weeks a go) and so there's basically nothing off piste or below the permanent snow line.

In Tignes this means that we're restricted to the Glacier with nothing else open. Elsewhere, only areas with lift access on Glaciated terrain are open for business so far.

Tignes has been good this last few days and I head back over there tomorrow for another 3 days.

I have a week off and then I'm back to Tignes for a week and then its full speed ahead for the winter through until May!

I had a great day riding yesterday, I'd forgotten how much fun the Jones flagship is to ride. It totally inspired me for the season ahead.

All we need is the snow!

I did another Haute Savoie FFC (French Federation Cyclisme) meet last Saturday at the velodrome in Geneva.

My second time racing and I finished 2nd in the Scratch race and 1st in the flying lap Time Trial (in the masters Cat/over 30's) so I was pretty stoked on that!

I'm going to try to keep this going over the winter but I'll have to see how my legs fair with riding all day and intense sprinting in the evenings?

What else is new?

I just got a load of Salomon high backs in to put on my Splitboard fleets 'Spark R&D' Bindings. This should make them super responsive as last years 'Spark' highbacks where way to soft. This year they have stiffened them up and you can get new highback from 'Spark' to upgrade your old kit. The Salomon ones fit and work super well though so I worked my connections and they 'look and are' the business.

2 places are now available on a Splitboard intro course 23rd Jan, due to a cancellation. These are the last places available this winter, except for 1 place on my Lyngen/Norway trip (unless more cancellations come up, so keep checking back!) Ruth has waiting lists for quite a few courses now so contact her if you want to get on a list for something.

Right, that's enough of my waffle for now, I've plenty to get ready before I head back to Tignes (via a training session on the track in geneva) tomorrow.

All is good out here! But would be better if it snowed some!!

Snow is forecast for the weekend so we wait and see!

Neil.